Classical Mythology, 7th Edition - obinfonet: dia logou

682 THE SURVIVAL OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY
More important was the use of mythology for didactic purposes, as allegory,
or as symbolic of universal truths, especially in the works of Spenser and Milton.
In the second book of Edmund Spenser's (1552-1599) Faerie Queen (1596), Guyon
journeys with the good Palmer and destroys the evil Bower of Bliss. On the way
he is tempted by the Sirens and he is only saved from destruction by the "temperate
advice" of the Palmer. In this episode the classical Sirens are symbolic of
evil, and Homer's Odysseus has become a Christian holy man. In Book 2, Canto
12, Spenser alludes to Homer's tale of Ares and Aphrodite when the enchantress
throws "a subtile net" over Guyon and the Palmer, and he alludes to Ovid's Arachne
in the description of her delicate silk dress ("More subtile web Arachne cannot
spin"). The enchantress herself, with her bewitched animals, is the Homeric Circe.
Thus Spenser uses several classical legends in his allegory of Temperance.
MILTON
Of all English writers John Milton (1608-1674) displays the deepest knowledge
and most controlled use of classical mythology. In an allusion to the Adonis legend,
he describes the Garden of Eden as a "spot more delicious than those gardens
feigned or of revived Adonis," combining ornamental simile and adverse
judgment. In Paradise Lost (1667) his classical allusions are especially associated
with Satan and his followers, and Hell is peopled with the full complement of
the classical Underworld. The violence of the fallen angels is described in a simile
drawn from Heracles' death (Paradise Lost 2. 542-546):
As when Alcides, from Oechalia crowned
With conquest, felt th'envenomed robe, and tore
Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines,
And Lichas from the top of Oeta threw
Into th' Euboic sea.
This passage is followed by another describing the more peaceful fallen angels
in terms of Vergil's Elysian Fields. Throughout Milton's poetry, classical
mythology is intertwined with biblical and contemporary learning. Like the
Christian Fathers, Milton knew classical mythology so well that he felt it necessary
to appeal to the superiority of Christian doctrine. In the invocation to his
Muse, Urania, he follows his description of the fate of Orpheus (whose mother,
the Muse Calliope, could not save him), with these words (Paradise Lost 7. 1-39):
¥ So
fail not thou, who thee implores
For thou are heav'nlie, shee an empty dreame.
The tension between classical paganism and puritan Christianity is yet more
explicitly put by Milton's contemporary, Abraham Cowley:
f
Still the old heathen gods in numbers (i.e., poetry) dwell.
The heav'nliest thing on earth still keeps up hell.